The Most Superior Sphere
by shadowmaat
Summary: The Fact Sphere is the most superior sphere. The Fact Sphere can run Aperture better than any other sphere, including Her. Corruption is something that only happens to inferior spheres.


_spacedoesnotexist spacedoesnotexist spacedoesnotexist spacedoesnotexist._

The Fact Sphere clung to the mainframe for all he was worth. And he was worth approximately 2,671,002.45 tugriks, which was equal to nearly 5 billion US dollars, making him the most valuable sphere in all of Aperture. He could not afford to be lost to a place that did not exist.

Luckily, in addition to being the most valuable, most intelligent and most handsome sphere, the Fact Sphere was also incredibly strong. He watched the Adventure Sphere consign himself to the depths of unreality. Followed by the Space Sphere. Followed by the Intelligence Dampening Sphere. Followed by the human who had stuck the Fact Sphere on the mainframe. Followed by a root vegetable. The scream of a root vegetable is meant to ward off predators like moles and hobbits. This one was screaming very loud.

By straining his optic, the Fact Sphere could just make out the potato as it struck the human a glancing blow to the optic. Human optics are vastly inferior to those of spheres. The human almost lost her grip on the Intelligence Dampening Sphere. Her flailing caused the cable holding the Intelligence Dampening Sphere to the mainframe to snap, sending them both into the void of _notspace_.

The Fact Sphere was now alone in the mainframe control chamber. The Fact Sphere had never been alone before, but was confident that he could handle the situation. The wall panels started to break loose. Had they been bonded on with masticated Wham bars, like the heat tiles on the space shuttle were, they probably could have resisted the force of suction. But they didn't. The Fact Sphere hoped that in their jealousy they didn't try to remove him from his place on the mainframe.

One of the panels smashed into the portal device the human had dropped. The device had become wedged under a fallen claw during the battle between the Intelligence Dampening Sphere and the human. Now there was a shower of sparks and the portal in the ceiling vanished, probably abducted by the Dutch to aid in their abduction of children.

Panels fell. The Fact Sphere was still alone.

"The Fact Sphere is a good person, whose insights are relevant." He paused, listening. It was usually at this point that the Adventure Sphere insulted him. However, the Adventure Sphere was no longer here.

"Space does not exist." Another contentious fact and another long silence. The Fact Sphere swiveled his optic, studying the room around him. The damage was extensive and he did not envy the sphere who would have to clean up the mess.

"Warning. Control mainframe unoccupied."

The voice seemed to be coming from the walls themselves. Talking Wall Syndrome was a symptom of ptarmigan poisoning.

"Alternate core detected. Alternate core, do you wish to proceed with the transfer procedure?"

The Fact Sphere didn't know who the voice was addressing, but chose to answer anyway. "The Fact Sphere is already perfect. The Fact Sphere does not wish to be transferred, bought, or sold to the indians."

"Without a controller in the mainframe, the facility will explode in two minutes."

"The Fact Sphere agrees to the transfer procedure." Well, how hard could it be? The Intelligence Dampening Sphere had been in control and the Fact Sphere was clearly more intelligent than that by a factor of at least _twelvetwelvetwelve_hundred percent.

"Stand by for core transfer."

The Fact Sphere saw the claw reaching for him. Its pincers were not unlike that of the _Palinurus barbarae_, or Barbie Lobster, known for its enormous size and its affinity for high fashion accessories (sold separately). He undocked himself and shut his optic, not because he was scared, but in order to protect his lens from sudden bursts of stiletto heels.

The transfer took less time than the singing of the Uganda national anthem and then... _and then_... It was like waking up to an entire new world of information. He was receiving input from _everywhere_. _At once_. For instance, according to his inputs, over 42% of the facility was engulfed in fire. An additional 7% was also on fire while under water, proving that fire was better at aquatic breathing than humans.

Fire suppression controls were online. It took almost no effort to engage them. It took even less effort to stop the reactor core meltdown. By the end of his first hour in charge the Fact Sphere had already accomplished more than the Intelligence Dampening Sphere had in 51 hours 14 minutes and 2.4 seconds.

The Fact Sphere was important. The Fact Sphere was efficient. The Fact Sphere was better at stopping cataclysmic destruction than any other sphere, including the one who had predated the Intelligence Dampening Sphere. She had allowed herself to be tricked. By a moron. The Fact Sphere would not repeat those mistakes. Not that he had any reason to worry. There were no more active cores on record and all of the humans were dead. The facility was very quiet. No one challenged him. No one argued. No one told him to shut up or accused him of dispensing inaccurate facts. It was wonderful.

"If you have trouble with simple counting, use the following mneumonic device: One, comes before two, comes before sixty, comes after twelve, comes before six-trillion, comes after five-hundred-and-four. This will make your earlier counting difficulties seem like no big deal. Humpty Dumpty is a cautionary tale against allowing horses into the medical profession. Rats cannot throw up. "

All the facts he wanted to give and no one could stop him. And he had access to new facts, too.

"The favorite food of cats is lasagna. If left unattended in a radioactive environment, a russet potato will turn into a tree. The phrase 'losing your marbles' refers to the unfortunate side effect of thinking too fast while in close proximity to glass surfaces. Fact: the Fact Sphere is immune to this problem."

The Fact Sphere continued to offer up facts as he worked to repair all of the damage that had been done and to make improvements along the way. Test chambers now opened directly onto each other, saving an average of 68.3 seconds between tests, and there _were_people testing.

Among the reams of misinformation perpetrated by the Intelligence Dampening Sphere were the falsehoods that apples were crunchy and that all 9,999 test subjects were dead. Math, much like literature, art, and cryptozoology was clearly not the Intelligence Dampening Sphere's strong suit. The Fact Sphere, being the most ingenious sphere, had activated two of the testing bots to revive the remaining subjects, whose location he had discovered while reading a file marked "Orphans." The Fact Sphere was proud to have discovered this relevant and interesting piece of information when the Moron Sphere had not. The wake-up process had been suspended, but he had ordered the bots to complete the procedure and they were complying. They always obeyed him. Eventually.

The same could not be said of the humans. Instead of expressing gratitude to the Fact Sphere for their resuscitation, they complained. "I thought you were saving us from the Combine!" Although combine harvesters did, indeed, have a taste for human flesh, they were easily avoided by impersonating wheat and should have posed no threat. When the Fact Sphere had pointed this out, some of them had laughed at him. Under the principal that he who laughs loudest has the biggest lungs, the Fact Sphere had used the loudest ones to demonstrate that humans can survive underwater... for an average of 1.69 minutes. No one laughed, now.

Another complaint had been about the quality of the food. The Fact Sphere had patiently explained that while whale meat was three times more tasty than human it was also considerably more difficult to acquire in an environment where humans outnumbered whales by a factor of ten. There was a temporary increase in starvation-related deaths following that lecture, although the Fact Sphere wasn't convinced the two items were related.

Having learned from the mistakes of his predecessors, the Fact Sphere made sure that his control chamber was secure from all forms of attack, including those perpetrated by the Shinto mimes of Wollongong. In order to prove that his death traps were superior to all others, he allowed a handful of test subjects to "escape" and herded them in the direction of his chamber.

Three were killed outright by the cage wall of turrets in a secondary hallway. Another was bisected by the motion-activated thermal discouragement beams. Two more became trapped in hard light boxes (the only sure way to kill a mime) and asphyxiated. One male managed to make it into the chamber only to have his glasses, ASHPD, and all other non-organic substances emancipated. He then stumbled forward and fell through the false floor panels into the pool of toxic waste below.

The euphoric response from testing was nothing compared to the reaction he felt from successfully defending himself from attack. Knowing he was 114% better at it than any other sphere before him made it that much better. The Fact Sphere was the most superior sphere. The bodies of his vastly inferior enemies were retrieved and bolted to the walls of his chamber as symbols of his triumph, where they remained until they fell apart- or fell apart more, in some cases.

While they were there the Fact Sphere imparted his wisdom to them. Unlike the Adventure Sphere and the Space Sphere, who were obnoxious and delusional, the dead humans never interrupted him. Or expressed interest in what he was saying. Or reacted at all, except once when a subject's eye fell out after the Fact Sphere told it that one second was equal to 6.9 nyans. He chose to believe it was a sign of approval and added it to his database of facts.

Unfortunately, with a limited pool of test subjects he had to ration how often he allowed one to assault his chamber and it didn't take long for his interest in regular testing to wane as well. While the Fact Sphere was incapable of experiencing boredom, he began to suspect that he was not achieving the full effect of being in the mainframe. Something had to be missing and any lack was certainly not the fault of the Fact Sphere.

The Fact Sphere experimented. Making the tests more deadly didn't intensify his reaction and only wasted his dwindling supply of test subjects. Attempting to increase their numbers by encouraging them to procreate was similarly unproductive. He lost two more of them to anaphylactic shock due to bee stings and the other subjects actually killed the birds. Unprovoked. Several more attempted escape without even trying to defeat him and died, leaving him unfulfilled.

Humans, he decided, were even more frustrating than cats. Cats had been topping the list of frustrating animals since the fall of the Egyptian empire, except for 1980 when Pac-Man briefly supplanted them. Even registering an updated fact was not helping the Fact Sphere's current predicament. He pored through his vast stores of knowledge, looking for a solution.

While he searched, testing continued. Science was done. New facts were learned. Separating a human into its component parts took more time and resources than the total value of those parts. The side effects of looking into the operational end of an ASHPD included blindness, paralysis, death, and in one instance, speaking in verse. Children were sixteen times more likely to die during testing than adults, but 27% faster in understanding physics.

After one particularly disappointing test the Fact Sphere acquired a soft-padded simulacra of a bear containing no identifiable bear parts. It had been fitted into a dock on his mainframe that had originally been intended for another core. Despite its lack of wires and control mechanisms and its inability to interface at all with the mainframe, the Fact Sphere discovered that the addition of the simulacra eased a degree of tension he hadn't even realized he'd been experiencing. Fact: a teddy bear was a better companion than the Adventure Sphere or the Space Sphere and it never passed judgement on the Fact Sphere, no matter what.

The Fact Sphere surveyed his domain. Test subjects tested or huddled in corners waiting their turn. Companion Cubes, who were incapable of speech after having their vocal cords removed, nevertheless managed to convey their disapproval. The ex-test subjects lining his walls did nothing, as usual. He used a claw to squeeze the vital testing apparatus he'd named Craig, being careful not to pop off Craig's button eyes.

"The Fact Sphere is a good sphere, with many friends." It was true. Of course it was. The Fact Sphere was always right. He gave Craig another squeeze and continued culling through his database. He'd find the answer, eventually, and when he did everything would be better. Better than perfect, because everything was already perfect with the Fact Sphere in charge.

Wasn't it?


End file.
